NEWPORT, R. I., Aug. 19 (AP).----Thirty-six persons had lost their fight for life tonight, twenty-four hours after they had been enveloped in a flood of steam let loose from the bursting boiler fo the excursion steamer Mackinac bound for Pawtucket, R. I., as she steamed through Narragansett Bay.

There are still left in the Naval Training Station and Newport City Hospital thirty-five persons. Naval physicians said that several, perhaps all, of their patients might die.

The death list grew by the hour. Every attendant at the Naval Hospital, where most of the victims were taken, was on duty and worked ceaselessly. As many of the patients as could be removed were taken to the Newport Hospital, where twenty-five volunteer nurses, many of whom saw service overseas, attended them in wards filled with flowers brought from the gardens of Newport's society leaders.

Naval physicians found new deaths in the accident wards on almost every visit. Hospital officials stated that the number of dead would probably reach fifty.